apocalypsehowcomm | Event

For Sport

➥ Breaking It In

(cw: mentions of apparent mutilation of/violence against animals and animal death)

The conference room on the upper floors of ADI HQ is bright, airy, perhaps unnaturally so for the grim tidings that bring people here today. Those who have recently arrived will be ushered to the meeting by ADI employees or by Bonnie. It's not just the newest arrivals, but some other people who seem to be longer-term employees. The room is rather large and arranged like a lecture hall. Bonnie takes up a seat near the back, looking somewhat uncomfortable, but smiling at anyone who greets her.

At 9 AM sharp, a person steps into the room and heads to the front. They have curly hair and are wearing a gray business suit with a dark blue bow-tie. When they address the group at large, they speak in a calm, measured tone. "Good morning. I appreciate some of you may be here more reluctantly than others, but… there are matters of import to all of us to discuss. Some of you may have seen me already. I am Reyes Amador, assistant to Ms. Lehrer, the head of ADI. Earlier this week I sent out a message regarding some unusual activity at Coffin Beach. Thank you to those who investigated."

Their eyes seem to find the people who did, in fact, go looking, whether they found something or not.

"We have determined the creatures are shape-shifters. Some sort of, em... horse thing. In lieu of a term they might give themselves, we are referring to them as kelpies. Given the locations these were found, as well as other information into disappearances and deaths and mutilations of sea mammals in the area, we believe the kelpies are coming from the Essex Bay area to the north.

"For those willing to assist, we are mounting a reconnaissance mission. This is not intended to engage kelpies, just to find out where they are and how we might best approach an attack. All supplies, transportation, and monetary compensation will be provided. We will meet at ADI HQ in main lobby at 6 PM three days from now. Essex Bay is a remote site and conservation area, accessible only by boat, and not without a scientific permit. As you may guess, we will be traveling under cover of nightfall." Reyes smiles.

"I will be accepting questions about further details. I understand this is the first mission away for many of you, and you may have concerns. I will do my best to allay them. Bonnie also has some experience in these missions, if you would like first-hand accounts. Please also feel free to discuss amongst yourselves if this is a mission you think you are ready for. You will not be required to attend, nor penalized in any way if you do not. There is additional work to be done here, both with continuing examinations of the bodies we have and other efforts unrelated."

➥ Move the Goalposts

(cw: kidnapping, violence, sadism)

It happens away from the safety of ADI HQ one evening or so early in the morning, it's still dark, away from the potential for help, maybe. One moment, you (and possibly someone you're with) are walking, and the next, you will find someone has grabbed you and slammed you into the nearest surface. For those unable to fight back, a cloth will be held to their noses and mouths--chloroform, something to knock them out. For those able to fight or even to escape thanks to not actually being corporeal, they'll find that it is a trio of people who have attacked them. They wear jagged smiles and they're all much too sharp around the edges beneath their clothes. Those who saw the kelpies at Coffin Beach may recognize these people as something like them.

"Run, rabbit, run," one of the group says, voice rolling out like a gurgling tide.

Those who run will be chased and, if caught, chloroformed. Perhaps you're lucky, though. Perhaps you can race them back to safety. Or perhaps you'll find help along the way to protect you. Either way, the kelpies are relentless in their pursuit unless one of their number is injured or their prey can make it to ADI. The kelpies seem reluctant to actually enter ADI HQ or their housing, and will break off pursuit there, slinking back to the shadows.

➥ Curveball

(cw: kidnapping, violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, sadism, body horror, transformation, potential for claustrophobia)

For those unlucky enough to be caught, they'll find themselves waking amongst mud and bodies. Living, breathing bodies, thankfully. You have been tied up, but not gagged, and left with a group of other captives. A nearby fire casts light over everything, showing a large group of naked people with long, scraggly hair hauling a seal up out of the water. The animal fights them with a cunning that might seem odd, but the kelpies just laugh at it. They get it up near the fire, one raises a knife, and stabs into the seal, dragging the blade down its belly.

The seal bellows and then goes limp, seeming to collapse in on itself. It isn't long before a woman is drawn from the skin, shaking, fighting, wild-eyed with terror as her captors shove her around the fire in their own game. A few others turn their attention to the captives who are just beginning to wake and move about. They approach, one grabbing the skin the woman had come out of, others grabbing more skins from a nearby pile.

"Hush, hush... you'll have your freedom soon... while you can swim." The words come just before the kelpie slices your bonds and throws the skin over you.

The skin grapples your body, twisting tight around you, encasing and restraining. Your body is different now, thick and round, ungainly in the mud. Your legs have fused together and your arms have shrunk to thin flippers. This is not your body, you can feel how foreign it is, how you're crammed into the too-small confines of it... but you have instincts to go with it. Water is freedom! Or it's an attempt at freedom. It's either swim for your lives as some mockery of a selkie or stay and see how it feels to be cut open. Luckily for you, you'll find yourself psychically linked to the other selkies around you. Maybe you can do something together? Best think fast because the kelpies are setting their sights on new prey to chase once they've finished with their latest victim.

➥ Below the Belt

(cw: violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, body horror, gore)

The journey to Essex Bay isn't a long one, but it's somewhat treacherous as a small group of powerboats make their way into the refuge. The mission is simple: find where the kelpies are and see if there are any strategic points of-

Was that a seal? There are, in fact, many seals that pop up once boats enter the bay. The animals might seem to have an unusual cunning about them. Will they lead you somewhere useful? Perhaps try to flop themselves into your boats? The point is, there are seals accosting you in the middle of the night, and that's weird. Perhaps they have something they want to communicate.

Or was that a horse? A crocodile? There's something that seems to have noticed you, and it's smart enough that it's going to try to tip you and anyone else in your boat into the water rather than trying to engage otherwise. Sit down, you'll rock the boat.

➥ Sticky Wicket

(cw: potential for severe burns/injury, pain)

ADI is engaged in far more than one mission at a time, and for those not dealing with Essex Bay, or even before that, there are pick-ups to handle. Artifacts, you've been told as you're paired with someone else, whether you like it or not. The mission is simple: go to the Docks, collect a package from a locker there, and return with it to ADI. You've been provided an exact location and a code for the combination lock. The section of the Docks you've entered seems to be one with a lot of empty warehouses covered in graffiti, but the locker is there, something heavily reinforced and designed to be virtually impossible to get into. There's evidence that people have tried to gain entry without success.

Your code works, though, and you have your prize! You've been given strict instructions not to open the box the artifact is in… but there's nothing technically stopping you now, and there is a strange pull toward it.

Those who can't help themselves will find they have just picked up… some piece of sports gear! It looks wholly innocuous. Touch even a finger to it, though, and a horrific, searing pain will consume your entire body as 3rd-degree burns bloom across the skin where you've touched your artifact.

Or maybe you have a will of iron and sense enough not to touch strange, supernatural objects. What should be an easy mission is quickly derailed by some young punk darting out of an alleyway to try to steal your package. Or, at the very least, knock it from your hands. The youth is not alone, either. You've found yourself on someone's 'turf,' and they want what you've got. Are you cruel enough to let them have it?

➥ Mod Notes

BREAKING IT IN (21 July): Both Reyes and Bonnie will be available to answer questions that characters might have or listen to their complaints. Please put "NPC Requested" somewhere in your top-level response if you would like a mod response. For characters who can access their supernatural abilities and have some measure of supernatural spidey sense, both Bonnie and Reyes will register as off, but in different ways. Characters are welcome to attempt to use whatever powers they believe will work on the NPCs. There are potential IC consequences for this.
MOVE THE GOALPOSTS (23-24 July): Characters are welcome to capture or kill the kelpies. The only information they will be capable of providing to those who capture them and attempt to compel them for information is that they consider the entirety of the Massachusetts coast as their 'hunting grounds.' Whether that's true or not, it's what they believe.
CURVEBALL (23-24 July): Kidnapped characters will become seals! Sort of. Psychic seals who are extremely ill-fitted to the skins they're in. The only way to escape their current state is to be cut open and pulled out. As soon as they start to flee, the kelpies will chase them. Those who are captured will be cut out, toyed with, and shoved back into a skin again and again to continue the chase until they simply can't go on anymore.
BELOW THE BELT (24 July - night): Characters may encounter their selkie-fied comrades! Unfortunately, while the selkies can communicate with each other psychically, they are incapable of human speech. They are also being actively hunted by the kelpies. Characters may kill any kelpies they come across. Capture will not be possible in this case while they're in their horse forms. If PCs do not eradicate the kelpie threat that night, NPCs who have joined the mission will do so. Unfortunately, reconnaissance has become engagement, whether they like it or not.
STICKY WICKET (21 July - 5 August): You may select any piece of sporting gear you'd like for your character to pick up as long as it can fit in a reasonably-sized box. The pain associated with the burning will last only as long as a character is touching the object. Holding onto it for more than a minute will likely result in coming very close to death. Characters with inorganic appendages will find that the artifact will start to melt that appendage, whatever it is made of and it will still, somehow, hurt while it does it.
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ as it so happens, keith is heading towards the same bus stop as meredith, but approaching it from the opposite side meaning he gets a clear view of her and... perhaps more pertinently? the figure peering around the corner after her. shrouded in shadow, it's hard to make out any of its features to accurately determine if it's human or monster, but the way it watches how meredith's walking is distinctly predatory.

whether it's pragmatism or pessimism, instinct has keith immediately start looking around for others because if it's one of them, the monsters don't hunt alone. sure enough, another figure emerges from around the corner.

shit

but where's the third?? no time to worry about that right now -- if she hasn't seen them yet, she needs the warning. ]

Meredith, get inside somewhere now!

[ the shout does little to dissuade the kelpies. with stealth no longer on their side, they stagger out into the open and start chasing down their prey. ]

Edited (html) 2021-07-26 02:53 (UTC)

[Meredith glances over her shoulder and begins to walk faster. Not run, but there's definite hustle, to the degree she can, trying to find a business that's open, that she can get inside before she's overtaken.

Unfortunately, most of the stores on this street shut their doors around the time the sun set, if not earlier.]

[ .... at the rate that meredith's going, the two kelpies are going to catch up to her pretty quickly.

also? this is the last fucking time that keith's going around town wearing plain clothes. fuck that talk about not standing out, he'd have been much better equipped to take on two of these shapeshifting monsters with his paladin armor on. who cares if the locals think he's some weirdo dressing up for comic con, there are bigger things to be concerned about here.

as for weapons, he's got two options: his bayard and his knife. considering the range of the kelpie's strangely elongated limbs and sharp teeth, the bayard seems like a better option to be going for and that's what his hand instinctively grabs outo.

but he doesn't get any further when a sharp scream rings out from across the street. a quick look in that direction and... fuck. looks like kelpie #3's reared its face after all, advancing on another likely target: a little girl cowering against the window of the local bakery.

keith looks from the kid to meredith, scowling as he activates his bayard. the realization hits him like getting his head dunked in a tub of ice: the kelpies aren't going to get away with two victims here, but they will get away with one. shitfuckshit. eyes darting from meredith to the girl back to meredith, keith lets out a frustrated noise. ]

Meredith!

[ it's a messed up thing to be asking a potential victim to make the choice, but that's the predicament they're in now. keith's grip on his bayard tightens. if she can't make the call, then keith sure will. even if he's not gonna like it. ]

[Meredith is not a hero. Meredith is self-centered and superficial and willingly enables villainry, back where she comes from. Meredith has never been brave before, not really.

But in this one moment, Meredith makes her choice.]

Keith! Save her!

[Because maybe on some level Meredith knows who deserves this, whatever this is, more.

She stops running, turning to try to fight the kelpies, to make it so they need all three of them to take her down.]

[ it doesn't feel any better knowing that they both agree who to save here. keith has his own reasons -- a little kid somehow doesn't seem as likely to survive whatever the kelpies want. she probably has family here. she's too young to comprehend what's happening, let alone come up with a possible plan of escape. the reasons go on and on, but it does not make watching meredith turn and put up a fight any easier. ]

I'll come back for you!

[ he yells over his shoulder as he rushes across the street. the screaming on this side of the street's already stopped as the kid drops unconscious with the press of a chloroform rag to her face. the kelpie rears up, snapping elongated jaws in warning. it's not a warning keith takes though as he does a running jump into the air and slices straight through one of the kelpie's unnaturally long and bony arms. twisting and writhing, the monster shrieks, flails and starts to shrink back.

kill it, kill it, kill it -- you have to kill it now! the instinct is downright intrusive, like it's nails being scratched down a chalkboard over and over. kill it now before it comes back. kill it now before it can hurt anyone else. kill it!

the priorities ought to be more obvious: the unconscious kid. meredith. pursuing an injured kelpie should take the backseat here, but there's a curse on his bayard and a price to be paid for activating it that keith isn't aware of that's tampering with his head. barely stopping to catch his breath -- he pursues, throwing his sword to lodges the blade straight between the facsimile of humman shoulder blades. the creature staggers with a disconcertingly human wail.

as far as his paranoia fueled brain is concerned, this is all very well and good. but time's a wasting and meredith may not be faring so well.... ]

[Meredith, meanwhile, is lashing out with her cane, the brass handle finding purchase in the body of a kelpie once or twice before they manage to overpower her. One of them holds her by her arms, nearly wrenching her shoulders out of their sockets (so much easier to do to her than most people), while the other gets out the chloroform.

It's likely that by the time Keith returns, all that will be left of Meredith on the sidewalk is a single loafer and her cane, dropped when she faded into darkness.]

Event - For Sport

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cw: arm dismemberment, violence (sorry about the l;dr)

Why apologize? <3 CW: kidnapping, chloroform